PEI announced that islanders will soon have access to abortion services, which has been unavailable in the province for over 30 years. Earlier this year, PEI pro-choice activists made plans to sue the provincial government over the long-standing lack of services.

A whole bunch of stuff was discussed and voted on at City Council on Thursday, including plans for SmartTrack and the East Gardiner. Check out Neville Park’s liveblog for Torontoist for the most salient details.

Canada’s immigration minister announced changes to spousal sponsorship cases, which will grant permanent residency to all spouses upon arriving in Canada. The new proposal comes after a study that women, racial minorities and those from Muslim-majority countries were disproportionately affected by delays to spousal sponsorship

Feminist Canada hosted a Twitter chat on abortion access in Canada; catch up on the convo at#AccessNow

Another concern raised about the budget thus far is that Tory is hoping for a line of credit from the province in order to balance the Operating budget. The rest of the budget’s proposals, including its promise to keep property tax increases below the rate of inflation, are dependent on this loan. The budget also does not allocate funds for the proposed SmartTrack, and assumes that there will be no increase to the police budget which is one of the city’s biggest budget line items.